An action-man teacher has hot-footed it across the desert in his latest feat of endurance.

Charlie Johnson, a science teacher at Grange Technology College in Bradford, has done long-distance running and cycling since his father bought him a pair of running shoes and entered him in the Great North Run five years ago.

The 28-year-old has run 72 miles up 42 peaks in the Lake District in 20 hours and 46 minutes in the Bob Graham Round running event. He has cycled 1,350 miles from Venice in Italy to Athens in Greece in 18 days.

Once he was driven to Scarborough so he could run 67 miles home, and over Christmas he collapsed with dehydration trying to run the full length of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.

But Mr Johnson’s latest conquest is his proudest. He completed the Marathon Des Sables, a 156-mile run across the Sahara desert in southern Morocco, a race considered the toughest in the world.

In seven days – one of which was spent resting – he pounded across sand dunes, carrying a tent, water and dehydrated food on his back, in temperatures reaching 46 degrees Celsius to finish 58th out of more than 1,000 runners.

The six-stage race attracts elite ultra-marathon runners from around the world. Mr Johnson completed the distance – the equivalent of six marathons – in 31 hours and 51 minutes, making him the sixth-quickest Briton. Mr Johnson said: “The biggest test was a 51-mile day. I was quite ill. I was throwing up so I had to walk for an hour and a half. I lost quite a bit of time but I never reached the point where I was going to quit. I just kept going.”

He said his i-Pod kept him going. “Listening to Kasabian in the middle of a desert is a surreal experience,” he said.

In his races Mr Johnson, of Horsforth, raises money for Cancer Research UK in memory of his late grandparents, Donald and Margaret Johnson, who died of cancer. Visit his charity webpage at alongway torun.co.uk/donate.htm